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Considering my system, which was built in the last 2 years with new components, would it be safe to assume I'm in AHCI already? In other words, is there an easy way to check within Windows? Through device manager, maybe?

So after confirming that I'm in AHCI mode via BIOS, I shut down and physically installed the drive. Booted up and Windows didn't show the drive in My Computer, but it did display in the Device Manager. I checked out the Seagate site and they recommended their software, DiscWizard, to add the drive if Windows didn't automatically pick it up. I go through the procedure, set the drive up as an MBR, and voila -- Windows sees it. Great! So I reboot and start migrating my Steam games to the new drive.

After maybe 45 mins of transferring, I get a blue screen with "A process or thread crucial to system operation has been terminated..." and STOP 0x000000F4. Google tells me this is an incorrectly installed hardware message (fancy that), but I don't know what I did wrong. One solution says to install the Sata cable to a master channel Sata input. I don't know what that means and my mobo manual mentions nothing about it.

Any ideas before I send the drive back and do some more research? I have a WD Black drive in my system now and I think I'll just pony up for another.

Odd, master and slave really shouldn't matter with SATA drives the way it did with IDE. If you look through the BIOS or the manual the various SATA ports may be labelled this way. Or you could just try them out one by one I guess, depending on your patience.

Hang on - you added a new SATA HDD to a system which already contains at least 1 SATA HDD (that you're booting Windows on) and it didn't show up!? That's fine, the drive is completely blank and needs partitioning and formatting before you get one or more 'drive letters' for it - you do that in the Disk Management Console (Control Panel - Admin Tools) - you don't install any other junkware so whatever you installed, get rid of it now.

Then you're copying stuff and you're PC BSODs? The obvious reason would be that you've not connected one of the SATA cables fully so it's loose (or damaged, perhaps) and the drive has been throwing CRC errors until Windows crashed. Check the cables are tight and if you have another cable - try that.

Another possibility is just Windows Copy crashing - it's MASSIVELY shonky with hige piles of files - try something like FreeFileSync or any of the other 10,000 copiers which will 'sync' directories properly.

The only other possible issue I can think of is that some chipsets like the bootable drive to be in Port0 (or at least no non-boot drives in that port). If ports aren't marked on the mobo, check the mobo manual to find out which one is "0" and make sure the new drive is NOT plugged into it (or just change the new drives plug which is the same thing really!!)

After that your only real options are that the crash was just random and perhaps unrelated to the HDD or that the HDD is k-nackered - it might be worth running some HDD diagnostics to check the drive - HDTach or HDSpeed or Seatools anything which does basic testing and SMART reporting...

p.s. OH - or that you left Steam running whilst moving it's folder - that might have done it :)

Well, I backed up a bit and looked for a master Sata channel. I have 8 ports total -- 2 white and 6 blue. I assumed the blue were standard and the white master, so I hooked into a white. This time, Windows picked it up immediately and it showed up under the Disk Management Console. So now I'm formatting it through Windows to be safe and I'll try transferring my Steam files once it's done.